


How shallow are you?

by Pegship



Series: Castle Episodic [3]
Category: Castle
Genre: Ex Sex, Gen, Inner Dialogue, s01e06 Always Buy Retail
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2018-09-13 20:50:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9141700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pegship/pseuds/Pegship
Summary: Beckett has a murder to solve, but her mind strays from the case when her shadow starts talking about sex with his ex-wife. Kate's thoughts during part of "Always Buy Retail".





	

"I had sex with my ex-wife this morning."

Kate wishes she hadn't asked. Not that she's embarrassed by Castle's oversharing - she's grown accustomed to his random TMI - but she's the one who nudged him out of his thoughts and into verbalizing, and now the boys are actually listening to him, nodding like they get it instead of focusing on the crime scene.

(Of course they get it. Collateral damage since Castle started tagging along - Espo and Ryan tease him, but they also call on him to back them up when it comes to typically male behavior. Damn bro code.)

"Castle. Crime scene. Dead body. A little respect, here."

Fortunately, he usually responds to a firm verbal bop on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper.

"I don't think he can hear me."

(Okay, not always.)

There's something off about Castle this morning, not just his preoccupation, something else, something Kate can't put her finger on...but another habit she's developed recently is the ability to block out anything about him that distracts her from her job. Most of the time. His comment about the charm is useful, so his presence isn't entirely pointless, and he says he has further information.

Turns out, they have to go to his loft to find it, and Kate hasn't been ensconced in his office more than ten minutes before she realizes what he's up to. Reading to her from his own book. Not the research, but the book itself, which she's read before and which left her none the wiser about vodou.

She's distracted again, though, by that sense of off-ness. His hair is more unruly than usual, but only slightly; a faint dusting of stubble is nothing new. He's wearing his usual tailored shirt, jacket, slacks, nothing mismatched or (God forbid) in dubious taste. Kate takes a deep breath preparatory to telling him off - and suddenly recognizes the element that's the crux of the matter. His scent.

Kate's good at sorting out odors, whether it's at a crime scene or on a date. This morning she was focusing on the smell of death and wax and damp flannel and must have missed what she's noticing now. There are variations like 'well-groomed', 'manly', 'honest sweat', all of which she's caught in the bullpen, in public, among her mostly male colleagues, or on a date. But this -

He smells like sex. Really. Not a strong scent - mostly an undercurrent to whatever product he used this morning - but unmistakable. How does she know that about him? (Shut up, brain.)

"I have a murder to solve," she says hastily, standing up.

(He had sex with his ex-wife this morning.)

"I do have another source."

(From the glance she can't help taking into the adjacent bedroom, she deduces that the deed was done there. It looks like a hurricane blew through. Or maybe an earthquake.)

"You call your ex-wife a 'deep-fried Twinkie'," she points out, apropos of nothing (like the rest of this conversation).

(He probably didn't have time to shower, thus the tantalizing hint of male hormones teasing her nasal passages.)

"...she's a million times worse."

(Who's he talking about? Oh, right.)

"If she's so bad, then why did you sleep with her this morning?"

(Presumably in that bedroom, on those sheets - the ones currently strewn over the floor - )

"Let me tell you something about crazy people," says Castle, leaning in confidentially. "The sex is unbelievable."

For one dizzying moment, Kate breathes him in and her mind flashes on just how unbelievable it would be with him. (How thrashed the bed would be, the heat of their bodies radiating throughout the room, the sounds of gasping and thrusting and hands grabbing and mouths...And the slick spicy smell of sex that would linger on their skin, and in her nose, all day.)

"How shallow are you?" she snaps, aroused and annoyed in equal measure.

"Very."

Her common sense is rolling its eyes and preparing to say something about not having time for this - but it's getting resistance from the more primitive part of her, which wants to drop some innuendo about how her desires tend to be on the "deep" side -

\- and thank the powers that may be, someone knocks on the door, Castle reaches past her to open it, and her last heady whiff of post-coital Castle is overcome by the smell of soup and bread.

"Somebody order lunch?"


End file.
